In the cab now heading to Andy Monfried at Lotame, and Brian Wieser is checking his new followers. "A-ha, Tim Hanlon is following me. I finally got him, Wieser gushed referring to the VivaKi digital media guru who is now following him on Twitter.

Much of today's social media journey with Interpublic's Wieser has been spent on "defining" social media. Wieser asks Breen if it can be offline: "Yes," says Breen, but he adds that unless it's shared online, "what's the value in that?" Breen also says we're learning what's valuable, and what's not on the social media chatter. "It's kind of like a brand by brand thing." "I may write in a tweet that I went to X retailer today, but that doesn"t mean - should say, 'Hey, Brian, come into my store today!'"

"Suddenly, you've got all these pages, and they're multiplying exponentially," says interpublic's Bant Breen. "When the social media space gets more interesting for me is when we get behaviorally targeted data," he adds. Facebook is burning a billion dollars a year in bandwidth costs. What's the upside? Breen thinks the potential is with "micropaymen systems, but the big social networks have been slow to "embrace it." "There are many potential revenue streams to this stool," says Breen, adding that where interpublic has found the greatest success, is by bringing four things together: Broadcast tv, search media, …

It seems ther is a limit, even for tech-minded IPG execs. Wieser, multitasking with laptop, and BlackBerry on the street, being filmed by this reporter's Flip camcorder, and a more professional Sony version being held by Interpublic PR exec Alissa Monnier. Apparently, it was all too much for Wieser to also sport a cup of hot latte, which didn't quite make it through Interpublic's revolving doors on the way up to visit Bant Breen. Splash! Not a pretty sight.

"It's research," he says. By sharing his thoughts with his Twitter community, he thinks he will learn something about social media from the exchange. Kind of like an instant poll. At last count, Wieser has about 150 followers on Twitter (not exactly an Ashton Kutcher). Asked how representative the tweet research might be, Wieser said, "How representative is anything?" Spoken like a true forecaster. The other part of this, is kind of like the "medium is the nessage." When Wieser did a "virtual worlds" outlook a year or so ago, he did the presentation in Second Life, replete with …

wieser"s supposition is that aggregating all the information surrounding social media conversations about brands inherently is something that has value to advertisers. Sigalow says -- and acknowledges this is a bit off the social media tipic -- that it is difficult for micro content to be discovered easily, because of the way in which Google scrapes and indexes Web pages. "It is very difficult for new content to be discovered that way," Sigalow said.

Greycroft, you should know, is a venture capital group that specializes in digital media, especially social media. Greycroft is one of the backers behind Buddy Media. They also backed, and sold ContentNext, publisher of PaidContent, to the Guardian Group. So Wieser has just asked Sigalow why social media hasn't been very "monetizeable," and Sigalow says that's because social media is inherently about people, and individual people's pages aren't necessarily something you can make money with, at least not from advertising. He says the big distinction among social media options is the difference between "people pages" (not very monetizeable), …

For those who want to follow Brian Wieser's Twitter dispatches on hos "desk-side visits" with social media gurus, here are ther Twitter handles: Bant Breen, Initiative â€" @bantbreen Andy Monfried, Lotame -  @andymonfried Josh Stylman and Pete Hershberger, Reprise Media - @jstylman Mike Lazerow, Buddy Media -  @lazerow Raquel Krouse, Emerging Media -  @ipglab Brian Monahan, Universal McCann -  @brionic Ian Sigalow, Greycroft   These visits will focus on exploring the answer to a common question:    “What is Social Media?” You are invited to follow Brian Wieser (@brianwieser on Twitter) …

9am: Ian Sigalow, Greycroft - Citigroup tower on lex and 53rd, 53rd floor   10am: Bant Breen, Initiative â€" 1 Dag, 5th Floor   11:00 am: Andy Monfried, Lotame -  440 Ninth Avenue, 11th Floor   11:50 am: Josh and Pete, Reprise â€" Coffee Shop/Union Square   1:30pm â€" 2:30pm: IAB Social event, Roosevelt Hotel.  We’ll meet Mike Lazerow from Buddy Media there   3:00pm â€" Raquel Krouse, Emerging Media Lab, Bryant Park   4pm: Brian Monahan via phone from Brian’s office, 622 Third

Let's just say, I so far am not a big fan of microblogging. I was iever a big fan of instant messaging, and I still haven't figured out any real value -- personally or professionalluy in tweeting. And I should tell you, at MediaPost's sprawling New York headquarters, I sit next to our very own "social medium," Kelly Samardak, the person who writes, photographs and posts our daily "Just An Online Minute" dispatches. But Kelly is much, much more. For one thing, she is a bonafide expert on social media, and is one of the people interpublic's Brian Wieser …